


hold tight, it's just beginning

by renaissance



Series: Pynch Week 2016 [5]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 09:22:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7796248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaissance/pseuds/renaissance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <i>Adam doesn’t like leaving questions unanswered. Except for that one. Was it Ronan? The hair is right, shaved close and furious, and the confidence is there too. Ronan even has the shiny car, although Adam’s yet to see him pull out a credit card. But beyond that—there’s something about Ronan that’s rough around the edges in all the wrong ways, jagged and dangerous. Talking to him is like scaling a cliff face.</i>
  </p>
</blockquote><br/>Pynch Week day 5 – Memory Lane
            </blockquote>





	hold tight, it's just beginning

**Author's Note:**

> I don't have much to say except that I'm unbelievably pleased with how this idea turned out, and I hope you enjoy it too! Thanks to Mandy for looking over it, and to Lark for inspiring the title (which is from "We Both Go Down Together" by the Decemberists.)

i.

Adam leaves the grocery store and goes home but the image remains fresh in his mind—the raven boy with the shaved head, self-assured and striking, paying with his own credit card and getting into his own shiny car.

It's not jealousy. It's not even attraction. It's ambition. Adam sees himself in that uniform, walking with that much confidence, surrounded by wealthy friends who don't care where he's from because he's _good_ , he's just as smart and cultured as they are and they know it.

He goes home and he stands in front of the bathroom mirror, whispering rounded vowels and watching the way his mouth moves—pausing, correcting.

 

ii.

He can't tell if it was Ronan or not, that day in the grocery store. He tries not to think about it. Ronan is not the image of Aglionby that had given Adam all that false hope. Or, not false, not yet, but still proving itself.

They met for the first time in Latin class. Ronan struck Adam as far too cool to be taking Latin. Adam had taken a seat front row centre alongside Gansey, the first (and only) friend he’d made, and someone he’d picked out as a fellow enthusiast for all things educational—a _nerd_ , as they’d call them at any other school. Then Ronan had sat down next to Gansey and Adam’s life flashed before his eyes, because this wasn’t quite a jock, but it was definitely someone who prayed on nerds, and Adam wasn’t quite ready to become bully-bait all over again, not just yet.

But Ronan just grunted a greeting at Gansey and folded his arms, slouching low in his seat. Adam shot Gansey a look— _do you know him?_ —and Gansey’s eyes lit up like he’d found something new for that weird journal he kept.

“Oh! Adam, this is Ronan,” he said. “Ronan Lynch, Adam Parrish.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Adam said, although he wasn’t sure yet.

Ronan gave him a once-over before deciding that Adam wasn’t really worth his time. Adam’s still puzzling out the way he and Gansey fit together, what their past might have been that makes them such fast friends now. And Ronan—Ronan is a question for which Adam doesn’t have an answer.

Adam doesn’t like leaving questions unanswered. Except for that one. _Was_ it Ronan? The hair is right, shaved close and furious, and the confidence is there too. Ronan even has the shiny car, although Adam’s yet to see him pull out a credit card. (He hasn’t reached the point where he’s comfortable enough to accept Gansey’s offers to come out for dinner with him and Ronan and their housemate.) But beyond that—there’s something about Ronan that’s rough around the edges in all the wrong ways, jagged and dangerous. Talking to him is like scaling a cliff face.

So it’s self-preservation. That’s what Adam decides it must be. You’re not supposed to meet your heroes; Adam decides that he won’t meet the Aglionby boy from the grocery store, but he’ll take Ronan Lynch instead.

 

iii.

The first time Adam goes ‘round to Monmouth he doesn’t know what to expect. He knows that Gansey, Ronan, and Noah live in an old converted factory— _upcycled_ , Gansey jokingly called it once—but that’s no adequate preparation for the way the place looms, forbidding and comforting all at once. Adam sees the way they all relax when Gansey’s Camaro pulls up outside it. He envies that.

It feels like taking the next step in their friendship—initiation, integration. Now that he’s inside the inner sanctum, Adam is really one of the gang.

He’s never had friends like this before.

They sit around and talk about Gansey’s dead Welsh king and his ley lines. Adam thinks it’s all a load of crap, but he’s too polite to say that aloud. Besides, he can’t look away from Gansey when he gets excited about something. It’s the most innocent sort of joy, and for all that Gansey can be incidentally insensitive, his naivety is charming when it comes to his passions. It’s this Gansey that Adam likes the most, the Gansey who spins like a solenoid and draws people in with his magnetic field.

They spread out on the floor and look at maps and drink lemonade—Gansey puts one of his mint leaves in Adam’s glass—and they draw lines and circle landmarks. But it’s clear that Gansey is the most invested. Noah comes in and out of the room as he pleases, and Ronan says very little unless he has to. It might be the happiest Adam’s ever been.

Gansey looks to him with all of that earnestness, and Adam’s chest goes tight. “I was thinking of driving along the ley line this Saturday and maybe going into the mountains, see if there’s anything unusual going on,” Gansey says. “Do you want to come?”

Maybe it’s madness, or maybe it’s Gansey and Ronan and Noah _and Adam_ , because he says, “Yeah, alright.” He catches himself. “But not too early. I’m working until four.”

“That’s fine,” Gansey says. “Ronan, you can drive by and pick him up, can’t you?”

Ronan, who hasn’t been paying much attention to anything except the leather straps around his wrist, looks up at the sound of his name. “Huh?”

“You. Saturday. Picking Adam up from work.”

“Who?”

Gansey sighs. “ _Parrish_.”

Adam holds back a really ugly scowl—Noah laughs out loud.

Understanding flickers on Ronan’s face, but he seems to settle on ignoring his lapse. “Yeah,” he says, “I can do that.”

 

iv.

Noah doesn’t go so far as throwing rocks at Adam’s window, but he is hanging out of the backseat window and shouting loud enough to draw the attention of the entire street. “Hey! Adam!”

“Jesus,” Adam says, throwing his bag over his shoulder. “I’m here, I’m here.”

They’re lucky his parents are out, visiting the cousins. Adam had feigned sickness. He’s on a tight schedule.

“Get in,” Gansey says. He’s piloting the Pig from the front seat. “We’re going to Nino’s.”

Nino’s has become as much of an institution to Adam as it is to the other Aglionby boys. (Adam _is_ an Aglionby boy, technically.) They have booths for six and tables for eight but it’s always the booths for four that they claim. They have their orders all worked out by now, right down to the strangely appealing iced tea, and although they stand out for the way they’re pieced together from the corners of Aglionby society, they’re still enough of a presence to claim their status as regulars.

The formation shuffles. Today, Adam’s across from Ronan, hemmed in by Noah. The mood is somewhat subdued by Gansey on the phone to his sister, but it can’t be helped. They make do with his physical presence, although it’s not quite the same. Ronan and Noah live together, and they’ll always be closer to each other than Adam is to either of them. He watches silently as they reduce the trio to a duo and back to a trio again, teasing Gansey while he leans away, covers his mouth, occasionally hums into the phone.

“Ooh, Richard, come back to bed!” Noah croons in a high-pitched voice, chin resting in his hands. He makes lovesick eyes at Gansey, more to get Gansey to laugh than to make his own acting more convincing.

“Yeah, Dick, get back here,” Ronan says. He doesn’t bother changing his manner at all.

“Dick,” Noah says.

Ronan smirks at him. “And then you can give me your—”

Adam kicks Ronan under the table. He doesn’t mean to, only he knows that he absolutely cannot hear the word _dick_ one more time or he’ll laugh and break the illusion and be the one to ruin the prank.

There’s a physicality to their friendship—friendship?—that Adam’s never had with anyone else. Ronan will knock their shoulders together when they walk or punch Adam in the arm to get his attention, but this is the first time Adam’s even come close to reciprocating that. For a moment he thinks he’s overstepped. Ronan freezes. Adam sucks in a breath. From the corner of his eye, he sees Noah looking between the two of them.

Then the moment breaks, and Ronan kicks him back. Adam yelps, and Ronan laughs so loud that Gansey groans in frustration and gets up from the table—

—something’s snapped in the atmosphere, and it’s not so awkward without Gansey holding court anymore—

—and Adam retaliates, but Ronan is faster, and Adam has to half-climb onto the seat to get out of his reach. Not to be deterred, Ronan reaches across the table and swats at Adam, but before he can make contact his elbow hits their pitcher of iced tea and sends it flying. The tea spreads across the table and starts to leak onto the floor and onto Noah, who’s so startled that he also jumps up onto his seat.

While an angry waitress cleans up their mess and another kicks them out, Nino’s rings with laughter. Most of it is Adam’s.

 

v.

It’s only the two of them. Aglionby isn’t usually so quiet. Adam isn’t usually here so early. Neither is Ronan—he seems to avoid being at school at all if he can possibly help it, but here he is, seven in the morning, legs crossed and huddled on the ground at one end of the courtyard.

Adam kicks a loose pebble at him. “Lynch.”

Ronan doesn’t startle. “Yeah,” he says, distracted.

Sighing, Adam sits down next to him. He gets out his history textbook and flicks to the chapter they have to read for class later that day. He’d tried reading it when he got home from work last night, but he was just too tired—so much of his schoolwork gets done like this, last-minute but to nothing less than perfection.

“What are you doing?” Ronan demands.

“Sitting with you,” Adam says. “What do you think?”

“Ugh.” Ronan sticks one leg out in front of him, almost petulantly. “You know what I mean.”

Adam plays dumb. “No, I don’t.”

It’s the wrong tactic—Ronan gives him the silent treatment. Adam supposes it makes sense. They argued last night at Monmouth, snapping at each other about magic and belief while Gansey was in the bathroom. (He’d come back, taken one look at the two of them, and said, “No-one told me the Cold War was on again.” He could’ve heard every word of it. Adam hopes he didn’t.)

Adam can’t just snap his fingers or wave his hands to get rid of the awkwardness. Magic isn’t real—although more and more he’s starting to hope it is. The favour. That’s what he thinks about the most.

“What,” Ronan says, after a few minutes, “you want me to apologise?”

“I don’t think you know how,” Adam says.

Ronan doesn’t say anything else. They sit side by side, shoulders almost but not quite touching, silent until more students start to arrive, and the courtyard fills up with noise and activity. Whatever Adam might have wanted to say, the moment’s lost.

 

vi.

Ronan picks him up from work sometimes. Not often enough for it to be a thing they do, but often enough that Adam comes to look forward to it as one of the best parts of the week, whenever one of his weeks condescends to be kind to him.

“What’s up,” Adam greets him. “You look pissed.”

“I _am_ pissed,” Ronan says.

Adam doesn’t make him elaborate. “Want to do something?”

“Yeah,” Ronan says. He tosses his car keys up and catches them deftly, all without looking. His gaze is on one of the factory dollies. “You reckon anyone will miss that thing if we borrow it?”

“Borrow,” Adam repeats. “No. I mean, I doubt it.” Like he’s not the one doing inventory this week.

Ronan _would_ be one of those people who always has a length of rope handy. He hitches the dolly to one end of the rope and knots the other around a hook in the boot, then shuts the boot with an angry slam. They drive off with it like that, Ronan breaking every speed limit while the dolly clatters behind them, shrieking as they turn corners. They only slow down to pull up into a vacant lot.

“You wanna go first?” Ronan asks.

“Sure,” Adam says.

The dolly’s lying on its side, a casualty of the drive there, and a promise of just how dangerous this is going to be. Adam rights it and climbs on. Even from outside, he can see a strip of Ronan’s face in the rearview mirror, and watches him turn away, feels him step on the accelerator.

Adam lasts three seconds of Ronan doing a donut before he falls off, skidding across the tarmac. There’s a rip in his sleeve, blood beading in a graze on his upper arm. It stings. Adam rolls onto his back, grinning. A moment later he hears the engine idle and then Ronan’s standing above him, reaching a hand down to help him to his feet. Adam accepts it—when he stands, he’s almost eye-to-eye with Ronan.

“Let’s see you do better,” he says.

Ronan hands him the keys.

It’s different with Adam driving. He takes a few circles of the lot to get the hang of Ronan’s car, and even then he can’t go as fast or do any of the tricks. But it’s a big lot, and it’s empty, and the night air is bracing, and with the windows down Adam feels like he can do anything. He turns a sharp corner and hears a shout as Ronan falls off the dolly.

A second later, Ronan’s at the window, blood spreading around a nick on his chin. “Don’t go easy on me,” he says.

They stay out late. Adam knows he’ll get in trouble for it, but he doesn’t care. He knows he _will_ care, but he doesn’t yet, and that’s what matters. Ronan drives him home and probably wakes half of Adam’s street with his shitty music. Adam lingers in the passenger seat for a moment before he gets out. He rolls his shoulders back, adjusts himself for the person he has to be around his parents.

“See you tomorrow,” he says.

“Whatever, Parrish,” Ronan says.

So his attitude still leaves a lot to be desired. But for every scratch on his skin, Adam feels like he knows Ronan a little better. It’s progress.

 

vii.

“Hey.”

Ronan’s leaning against the doorframe to Adam's history classroom, all rebellious elegance. The look on his face doesn't give Adam any clue as to what his “Hey” means, but he does clock the fresh scabs on Ronan's neck and arms that match his own imperfectly, not a forgery but a copy from the same studio. And he thinks, _I've arrived_ —because there he is in his Aglionby uniform with his textbooks and his messenger bag and his Aglionby gang, waiting outside for him.

“Earth to Parrish,” Ronan says, “you done daydreaming?”

“Ah.” Adam straightens up, pushes his chair out from his desk. “Yeah, just landed. What's up?”

Ronan lets out a laugh. “Nino’s. You coming?”

“I'm coming,” Adam says. He grabs his stuff and gets to his feet; Ronan walks ahead without waiting for him, which is one of the few things Adam’s always liked about him—he keeps his own pace, and if you happen to be walking in step with him then that's your own problem.

They fight sometimes. They’ll always fight. But for now, they head out together. This, Adam decides, is just the beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> Huh I actually wrote the last line ages before I chose the title but I guess it kind of works like a title drop now, which is pretty cool. Please leave a comment!


End file.
